Who Wants To Be A Smart Guy/Transcript

The complete transcript for Who Wants To Be A Smart Guy

Opening Scene
''{The camera shows a small tower with the Union Jack flag at the top. Red is walking on a path near the base.}''

RED GREEN: This is a monument to a famous battle that took place during the War of 1812, which was also the score: we got 18, they got 12. Every year, dozens of tourists come to visit this monument, and today I'm one of them. And like everybody who travels, you want to go home with a picture of yourself standing in front of the darn thing. Problem with that is, you got to stop some stranger in some place you've never been before and ask him to take your photograph. And before he can even take the picture, you got to train him how to operate a piece of equipment you barely understand yourself. {arrives at a picnic table and sits himself and his camera on it} Then you stand there like a wiener, well, this dude takes a picture of your feet with your stem over the lens. {opens a folder} Well, instead, I got Bernice to take a picture of me, {pulls out a cardboard cutout from the folder} waving like a tourist, {turns the cutout around and a closeup of it is shown, revealing a photo of Red waving while holding an oar} and then I just cut the thing out. Ain't that beautiful? Now you just carry this wherever you travel and when you see something you want your picture taken in front of, like, say the Taj Mahal or Frederick's of Hollywood, you just stand yourself up in front of it. Then all you do is just frame it just right.

{From the camera's point of view, it shows Red taking a picture of the Red cutout standing on the picnic table with the tower in the background.}

Intro
''{Red enters the lodge, waving. The audience cheers. He holds a piece of paper in his hand.}''

RED GREEN: Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate that. {holds up piece of paper, which has some writing on it} I got an invitation here to submit a contestant for a TV show they're shooting up in the Possum Lake area. {looks at paper} It's one of those game shows, Who Wants To Be a Smart Guy. And that's one of those trivia deals where they take something that you don't care about, and they try to attract your interest by adding cash prizes. Kinda like the way they used dowries for ugly women.

''{Dalton and Mike enter the lodge. Dalton holds a piece of paper in his hand.}''

DALTON HUMPHREY: Red, we gotta pick somebody to send to this TV game show thingy.

RED GREEN: Yeah, alright. {tries to think} Well, whose head has the most useless information in it?

MIKE HAMAR: Boy, that's a tossup.

DALTON HUMPHREY: Yeah, I know. {looks at his paper} That's why I made up this practice sheet. It's kind of a test test, okay? {looks at paper} How deep is the deepest part of the ocean? {looks at Mike} Mike?

MIKE HAMAR: Um, 12,000 miles.

DALTON HUMPHREY: You're high.

MIKE HAMAR: No, I'm just nervous.

DALTON HUMPHREY: Red, you wanna try another one?

RED GREEN: No, I don't wanna try another one.

DALTON HUMPHREY: Wrong answer. {looks at paper again while Red looks annoyed} What has four legs, two–

RED GREEN: {interrupting} No, no, no, no, I'm gonna ask you one: what's five foot eight and hates trivia games?

MIKE HAMAR: An idiot. {giggles}

DALTON HUMPHREY: {ecstatic} Absolutely right!

{Mike laughs while Red waves dismissively and heads for the door.}

The Possum Lodge Word Game
ED FRID: It's time to play the Possum Lodge Word Game!

''{The camera pulls back to reveal Ed standing behind the card table where Red and Brian Jacobs are seated. Ed takes out a pocket watch from under the table.}''

ED FRID: Today's prize is a pocket watch, for people who find that wearing a watch on your wrist is just too darn convenient. {picks up word sign} Red, you've got thirty seconds to get local funeral director Brian Jacobs to say this word...

''{Ed turns the word sign around. It displays on it the word "Immortal".}''

ED FRID: Immortal. Immortal! {puts the word sign down} Okay, and go!

RED GREEN: Alright, Brian, you know a lot about funerals and so on. What do you call a person that never dies?

BRIAN JACOBS: Bad for business.

RED GREEN: No no. What do Peter Pan and Dracula have in common?

BRIAN JACOBS: They suck.

RED GREEN: Okay, if a guy lives forever, he would be...

BRIAN JACOBS: ...very wrinkly.

RED GREEN: {snaps fingers} Okay, okay. You know, when people get older, they start thinking about this a lot.

BRIAN JACOBS: Viagra?

ED FRID: You're almost out of time, Red.

RED GREEN: Uh, okay. Okay, Brian, what do you call someone who just keeps coming back year after year forever?

BRIAN JACOBS: Uh, Alan Thicke.

RED GREEN: No, that's not what I was going at.

BRIAN JACOBS: He's everywhere on reruns of Growing Pains. They've immortalized him on that show.

RED GREEN: There you go! {rings the bell rapidly while Ed hands the pocket watch to Brian}

Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services
{Winston walks along past his truck and up to a wooden shed while carrying a green book.}}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: You know, throughout human history, some of the world's greatest discoveries were made in the smallest room in the house. Archimedes discovered water displacement while sitting in the tub, and that's where Newton found out about gravity, and it's also where Da Vinci got the idea for the look on Mona Lisa's face. {stops next to a wooden outhouse and points at it} It all happened here, in the restroom. It's a sea of calm in a tempestuous world. That's why Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services is pleased to announce the launch of our very own... (shows off several books on a shelf attached to the outhouse} "Bathroom Classics of Literature". Order now and you'll receive...

{As Winston says the title and author of each book he mentions, the title and author appear on the screen, with the title in yellow italic text and the author in white text.}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: William Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

{Yellow italic text reading "Shakespeare Collection" then appears on-screen.}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Our Shakespeare Collection includes...

{The titles of William Shakespeare plays appear on-screen in yellow italic text as Winston says the name of each.}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing. It's my gift to you. I hope you enjoy.

''{The scene then cuts to a black screen on which yellow messages scroll from bottom to top at a hyper-fast speed over and over again while a man reads parts of it. For the purpose of this transcript and to avoid confusion, the script is provided by way of an "Adventures" setup:}''

{Cut back to Winston, now reading the green book in front of the outhouse.}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: That's the "Bathroom Classics of Literature" series from Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services. {tears half a page off} Available while supplies last.

{Winston tosses the book onto the ground while entering the outhouse holding the torn-off half-page.}

Handyman Corner
''{Red walks up to a plain white van parked near some trees outside the lodge. He holds a magazine in his hand.}''

RED GREEN: You know, it can be really rough on a guy to be looking through a car magazine at all the fancy new sports cars and concept cars and then have to go back to his old van. {holds up index finger} But I have a solution for that. {walks up to a worktable covered in rolls of duct tape} It's all about how your vehicle looks, not how it performs. {waves dismissively} All that extra horsepower and fancy suspension of a sports car are just wasted in today's traffic principles, eh? So instead of spending money you don't have on the features you won't use, why not just repaint your van and make it look sportier? {picks up a Black Magic Marker and walks over to the van} Now, I'm not just talking about a fresh paint job. Oh, no, I'm way past that. You ever seen those rooms where they paint the fake windows on the walls? It's called, uh, "trompe l'oeil" {pronounces it "tromp loyal}. Yeah, it's French. It means "trick the eye". We're gonna do a trompe l'oeil 10W-30. {examines magazine and taps it with marker} What you wanna do is, uh, pick out a concept car from your magazine, then you want to draw the shape of that on your van. {opens marker} I would say get something from France or Sweden or somewhere far away so they can't sue you.

''{Red then uses the marker to draw a squiggly line along the side of the van. He then stops and tries to rub some of the ink off as though he had made a mistake. Wipe to a later scene. Red has now drawn the shape of a sports car on the van.}''

RED GREEN: Now, it doesn't matter if you don't get both sides exactly the same on these. Nobody's gonna ever see both sides of your vehicle at the same time, unless there's been a really bad accident.

Segue: Winston Rothschild
WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Hi, Winston Rothschild here of Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services with a lesson for you. There once was a young man from Turkey, whose septics were plugged up and murky. They blamed it on lead, from the pipes in the bed, when the culprit was too much beef jerky.

{Winston holds up his business card.}

Buddy System
{Dalton and Winston run down into the basement and walk up close to the camera.}

DALTON HUMPHREY: You're strapping on competition water-skis, you're sitting on the dock, staring down 75 feet of snarled line at a 200-horsepower water-ski boat.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Where your deranged brother-in-law is sitting at the wheel, goosing the throttle!

DALTON HUMPHREY: {shakes head} You shouldn't– {holds up index finger} You shouldn't be within a hundred miles of that dock, behind that boat, with that lunatic driving!

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: You're out of shape, you're out of excuses...

DALTON HUMPHREY: You're out of your mind.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Yeah, but you're way too proud to chicken out. I'll tell you what, though: if you don't think of something real fast, you, my friend, are fish food!

DALTON HUMPHREY: It's just hard to believe that all this started with one beer. {both nod, then Dalton shakes head}

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: But you know something? The kids were saying you just gotta go for it, and your mouthy brother-in-law was making wisecracks about body fat percentages.

DALTON HUMPHREY: You just felt you had to go for it and show that you had the moves of a twenty-year-old.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: And now, you're going to die!

DALTON HUMPHREY: You can bail without humiliating yourself!

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: This is where 25 years of marriage is gonna save your bacon!

DALTON HUMPHREY: Yeah, you call the wife over, you give her a kiss, you look her straight in the eye, and you say, "Honey, I love you."

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Then you add, "I only wish I had enough life insurance to provide for you and the children."

DALTON HUMPHREY: {chuckles, then holds up index finger} Then you look real brave, like you're really gonna go for it.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: {eagerly} If she's any kind of woman, and you know she is, {Dalton giggles} she'll have you out of those water-skis before your bathing suit gets wet. From the outside or the inside!

DALTON HUMPHREY: Yeah, and you're brother-in-law is not gonna argue with your wife.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: Oh, especially if he's married to her sister.

DALTON HUMPHREY: Yeah! Just remember not to look relieved, and your secret is safe.

WINSTON ROTHSCHILD: No need to thank us.

DALTON HUMPHREY: That's what friends are for.

{They turn and go back upstairs.}